Watch a Drone Paint Gigantic Long Exposure Portraits in the Sky

Long exposure photos can turn a flashlight in your hand into a brush that paints with light. Taking that idea one step further, the folks at Ascending Technologies strapped a color-changing light to a computer-controlled drone to create a series of massive holiday light paintings in the sky.

The company’s AscTec Falcon 8 drone was programmed with a pre-determined flight plan using Ascending Technologies’ AscTec Navigator software, and then relying on GPS positional data it was able to slowly ‘paint’ these remarkably recognizable glowing portraits.

The long exposure images took as long as ten minutes to shoot in some cases, with the drone following a path through the sky made up of almost 400 pre-determined waypoints. And it goes without saying that a calm, still night (not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse) was required for these to turn out as well as they did.